December
12th, 1953, Tip and her master, Joseph Tagg, an eighty-one
year-old retired gamekeeper from Bamford, England, had
been out on one of their long walks on the Howden (high
Derbyshire) moors when the old man passed away.
For fifteen weeks search parties failed,
and were set back due to severe frost and snow storms.
The man and dog were presumed dead, when, a couple of
men rounding up stray sheep in early spring came across
the body of Tipís master, with a starving and sickly Tip
on guard beside it. She had waited for over three months,
through the worst of winter, for help to come for the
one she loved.
Tip spent her last year with a niece of Joseph
Tagg, were she was awarded the highest order of canine
chivalry. A year after her death, a memorial shrine was
unveiled along the banks of Derwent Dam, in Derbyshire.

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